COVID-19 Pandemic, The Almajiri Conundrum, And The Future Of Nigeria -By Tinuoye Adekunle Theophilius

Nigeria was recently awash with the internal deportation of “almajiris’ from one Northern state to another and even to the southern part, under the guise of preventing the spread of COVID-19 in clear disregard of Section 41 of the 1999 Constitution which guarantees the right to move freely throughout Nigeria and says that no citizen shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom. The epicenter of the deportations which was ordered by the Northern Governors Forum was Kano state and involved movements to Kaduna, Katsina, Gombe, Kebbi, Yobe, Bauchi, Zamfara and Jigawa States. The aim of the deportations was to stem the spread of COVID 19 by closing down Quranic schools and returning all Almajiris to their parents in their respective states of origin.

The Almajiri educational system which was derived from the Arabic word ‘al-Muhajirun’, which roughly translates to a person who leaves his home in search of Islamic knowledge has been in existence for centuries in Northern Nigeria, The name Almajiri is also the name for young boys brought from far and near under the tutelage of seasoned imams and mallams. There is an argument that sending young children who are still minors in need of adequate parental care and responsibility to Almajiri schools at a very early age is counterproductive. The consensus is that over the years, the system has been fraught with a lot of distortions. Most schools lack the capacity and resources to provide for the basic needs of their students and in the process turned them into street beggars, scavengers and child labourers. There are instances where schools rely solely on what these children earn from their street labour.

Previous governments have also derived political mileage from the almajiri through optimizing their democratic electoral value without any commensurate socio-economic policies to ameliorate their plight. Others have exploited their potentials in diverse ways. Rather than fashioning concrete plans, politicians prefer to give their imams money and or food stuffs and then abandon them till the approach of another election season. Almajiris are casualties of the viciousness of past and present Northern state governments that parochially and selfishly use them without tangible interventions. No protections, benefits or safety nets. The decay of the almajiri phenomenon has been heaped on bad governance most especially Northern governors who shirk their constitutional roles to provide for their welfare. The almajiri have been excluded from national welfare schemes such as NAPEP, SURE- P and SIP. Due to their existing grim situation, the magnitude of poverty in the Northern Nigeria and the dearth of official statistics to accurately portray their current status, it is not surprising that they bore the brunt of the uneven impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

Before the global pandemic, Almajiris who constitute an overwhelming majority of youths in penury and indigence in Northern Nigeria were already considered as dregs of the society facing massive inequality of opportunities as a result of their low background, social treatment and existential conditions. Almajiris can be said to have borne the greatest magnitude of persistent health, quality of life, education, nutrition and life opportunities deficits in Northern Nigeria. The resultant effect in the context of systemic failures that have abandoned, neglected, and discriminated against this segment was the development of a critical mass of unskilled youths indoctrinated with a subservient mentality, clinging at the seams , at the mercy of nature and without no hope whatsoever of dreaming, actualizing dreams and having the semblance of a normal life. Let’s face it, almajiris are also human like the children of Northern Emirs, politicians, business moguls and technocrats full of ambitions and aspirations of utility to their immediate families and external communities.

The almajiri conundrum is a ticking time bomb that seems to have already spiraled out of control. There is widespread anxiety that the Almajiris would become an army that may soon overwhelm the already wracked nation. There have been several calls over the past three decades for concerted action by northern state governments to tackle this almajiri issue. But nothing concrete was done until this Covid 19 pandemic presented the governors with the opportunity to solve the problem. But the policy of deportation without any measures or follow up is clearly faulty and can exacerbate an already fragile situation. Nigeria is currently assailed by three key catastrophes in the North – Boko Haram Terrorists, Armed Killer and Kidnapper Herdsmen and Rampaging Bandits and cannot afford a fourth one- Almajiri .What is happening maybe a catalyst for social tensions within communities and violence in various forms which poses a growing threat to Nigeria’s unity and stability and this is why this issue has to be handled urgently, carefully and systematically. The seriousness of this issue cannot be taken lightly against the fact that the massive number of out of school children mostly in the North and definitely Almajiri) already poses a huge security threat to Nigeria.

Nigeria needs to critically examine the culture of governance and transform the policies and norms that concentrate power , wealth and privileges in the hands of a few , while the greater percentage of Nigerians like the Almajiri encounter self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and hopelessness. Nurturing the alamajiri in a system of positive societal, entrepreneurial and technological values would have produced remarkably different outcomes that would have built their energy, creativity and talents and optimize same for Nigeria’s socio-economic and political progress. To lift less than 5million Almajiris out of their socio-economic nadir would cost less than $100million, which is an infinitesimal fraction of the $29.9 billion total combined wealth owned by the five richest Nigerians in 2016 that OXFAM declared in 2017. This is an affordable price to pay to save Nigeria’s already very fragile situation.

Tinuoye Adekunle Theophilius is a Manpower personnel at Micjheal Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies, Ilorin, Nigeria, and also an external faculty associate at the Global Labour Research Centre, York University, Ontario, Canada.